Clinical advances in multiple sclerosis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis treatment: A review

Neurodegenerative diseases are clinical manifestations that depend on the anatomy and function of the affected areas. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and multiple sclerosis (MS) are some of these diseases, but they are also autoimmune and their etiology makes treatments limited and of little therapeutic efficacy. Currently, some clinical research advances can be pillars for the development of new treatments for these diseases. Therefore, the objective of this review is to describe the latest clinical advances in ALS and MS as well as their results in clinical recovery in randomized clinical trials, meta-analyzes, and full-text systematic reviews conducted in humans and rats, published in English and Spanish in the last 5 years, using PubMed, SciELO, and Cochrane. For clinical trials to be included, they had to provide a detailed breakdown of randomization methods, diagnostic criteria, intervention details, and efficacy evaluation. The results show that, so far, available medications, like riluzole and edaravone for ALS and fingolimod, dimethyl fumarate, and IFN β-1b for MS, only prolong the life of the patient. Among these drugs are also glutamate neurotransmitter antagonists, immunomodulators and even antioxidants; each of them showed significant improvement in the reviewed trials. Similarly, other non-pharmaceutical treatments, as the 600-mg dose of curcumin in the diet for ALS, showed improvement of the patients’ conditions. Regarding MS, more studies should be carried out on autotransplantation with adiposederived mesenchymal stem cells (AdMSCs) to investigate the potential therapeutic benefit of this technique in phases prior to secondary-progressive (SPMS).